Suozzi, addressing the RBA

PALISADES - “You can’t keep raising property taxes at the rate you’ve been doing.  It’s killing everybody,” argued the head of the Governor’s Property Tax Commission, Thomas Suozzi. That was his simple message to state officials Wednesday.

Suozzi, also Nassau County executive, addressed the possibility of a property tax cap to Rockland Business Association members during a membership luncheon at the Rockland Country Club.

Suozzi said a cap is the “number one thing on the minds of state residents and business owners these days,” and he is counting on the success of the initiative in other states to prove his point.

The speaker said his logic is simple. “All budgets are either revenues or expenses.  That’s it.  So, on the revenue side, we can keep on increasing the property taxes, or increase state aid, or on the expense side, we can reduce expenses, or at least the rate of growth of expense,” he said. “Those are out only choices. You can’t keep on increasing the property taxes at the rate you have been. Its killing everybody.”

Rockland Business Association President Al Samuels agreed a property tax cap would be efficient, and said the county’s economy depends on it. 

“We’ve got to be competitive.  We are a border county with New Jersey.  It is imperative for Rockland that we be competitive so that we can attract companies from New Jersey and keep companies from going to Jersey.  This (cap) will help.”

Suozzi argued that politics is playing too big of a role in the issue, and that focus is being lost.  He claimed re-election rates are so high that new minds and new ideas aren’t fostered in Albany.  “There are more indictments on a state level than there are people losing their jobs in the polls, and that’s not a joke.”

Suozzi claimed that property tax reform could be achieved given the success of the state Medicaid reform a few years ago.